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The Chinese central government has consistently taken decisive legal and policy measures over the past 35 years to secure, enhance, and expand farmers’ rights to farmland and forest land in order to reduce the gap in income and consumption between urban citizens and their counterparts in mountainous forest areas. While encouraging development of a forest land rights market to facilitate market allocation of resources, these legal rules and policy directives have particularly emphasized protecting farmers’ forest land rights and their property interests when such land rights are subject to acquisition by powerful enterprises.
In southern China, large-scale land acquisition by multinational companies coupled with local government’s desire for international investment tends to weaken farmers’ tenure security, reduce rule of law in the countryside, and threaten the livelihoods of farmers who depend on land for their living.